Finland NT
National team Finland is the Finnish team to compete in international World Cup and friendly matches. National team was created for Season 2 with 34 other national teams. The team plays currently its competitive home games at Old Style Arena of team Da Punishers. History Bremen's first Season First Finnish NT-coach elections took place at the beginning of season 2, with main candidacies by users Bremen and palokang. The elections resulted the win of Bremen, who became the first Finnish national team coach. The first match of Finnish NT was against Estonia. Finland lost, but a notable thing in that match starting five was that even three players, Santeri Junnila, Tuomas Uusimäki and Antti Markkula, who are still very common starters in Finnish NT. Other players in starting five were Raimo Ruska and Auno Peltonen. In the first World Cup qualifications Finnish NT placed fourth in group including also Brazil, Italy, Lithuania and Slovakia, winning three matches out of eight. This is still the only time any Finnish national team has been left out of the World Cup. Bremen's second season In the next elections previous coach Bremen had no real opponents and achieved the second season even though he had been criticed for bad results. However, NT and the coach had strentghened and in a very tough qualification group H, with FYR Macedonia, Germany, Malta, Romania and Spain, Finland managed to win seven games out of ten finishing the second in group and making it to World Cup after winning among all others Spain twice and Romania and Germany both once. In World Cup stage, however, Finland won only one game from the five possible. Finland was ranked 20th in the World Cup. Houston's time When the elections started it was clear there's more than one strong candidate. To be honest, there was two almost equal managers trying to claim the job of national team coach - MOD-Houston and Tuuna. The campaigns of both of them were somewhat successful and the outcome of the elections was surprising, both the candidates got the same amount of votes. Due to the registeration time MOD-Houston was chosen to lead the NT to their third World Cup. The beginning was slow and steady, nothing mind-blowing happened. Finland fell in the group D which contained Bosnia and Herzegovina, Finland, Australia, United States, Venezuela and Egypt. It was clear that the only acceptable result would be being in the top two of the group. The first match against Australia didn't wish anything good. Finland suffered a 26 points loss (72-98) in their home court against a tough defense of the Australian forces. Finland played the match without two of their shiniest stars, Antti Markkula and Santeri Junnila. Both of them were too tired to be fielded. So, in order to get the team back on track the tirednesses had to be reduced. It worked and with a help of that, some self-confidence and Finnish "sisu" the team managed to win the next seven matches in a row with a stellar point difference of +144. There weren't just one player who could take all the glory but the whole squad carried its help to the court. In the end the team Finland climbed to the second spot in their group and claimed a spot in WC round one. The second phase was predicted to become a tough and sweaty one. When the groups were revealed they seemed to be very equal, all having pros and cons of their own. Finland went to group D, once again, to play against the world's greatest teams such Latvia and Belgium, both of them played in the World Cup Final in the end. Finland started their journey with a victory over the Netherlands 84 to 62. Santeri Junnila was unstoppable, he scored 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, seven of them on the offensive end. The victory of course built up some positive momentum but it didn't last too long. The next match against Latvia dropped the team back on the mother Earth. 107-102 for Latvia after some thrilling moments. This must've affected to Finland's morale since the next four matches were all losses as well, one of them after five offensive rebounds and six missed shots in the last minutes against Belgium. The story of Finland was over. With a record 1-4 they had no chances to get to the Round of 16. Veikka Bogel Before the time of MOD-Houston Tapani Pajunen had almost always been the first option to start as a point guard whenever he was in a condition to play. Yet the progress of Veikka Bogel caught the eye of the coach very soon and the leading times of Pajunen were over. Nowadays Finland has two world class point guards to choose from. Both of them have their strong and weak sides and it's up to the coach which one of them he will field against their possible opposing point guards. Future Finland's future seems bright. Finland U18 NT has been doing well so far in both of the championships, getting 6th and 4th place. And the brightest stars from those teams have already gained their place in senior NT (Arsi Sjöholm, Jori Airinen, Roope Sipilä etc.) The hopes are high in Finland, the team is getting better and better and also the results have been getting better all the time. Current roster Category:Senior National Teams Category:Teams Category:Finnish Teams